May 4, 2014

Donald T. Sterling's Korean Konnection

A reader made a clever suggestion in the comments a few days ago that maybe what Donald T. Sterling was talking to V. Stiviano about in the taped excerpts was how his compensated companion shouldn't post Instagram photos of her being with black men because it makes the two of them look bad to a constituency that Sterling cares very much about: Los Angeles's Koreans. 

Sterling had to pay a fine to the feds for naming his Koreatown properties with the word "Korean" in them to let blacks and Mexicans know they aren't welcome there. In one lawsuit, an employee testified that Sterling had said, "I like Korean employees and I like Korean tenants." Sportswriter Bill Simmons, a long-time Clippers season ticket holder, wrote in 2009 that from watching whom Sterling brings to games as courtside companions, one thing he knows about Sterling is that he "loves Koreans."

As the commenter pointed out, Stiviano started out as Maria Perez in the barrio in San Antonio (the Daily Mail has the details and a high school yearbook photo). Other Mexicans gave her trouble for being part black African. She moved to L.A. and started getting plastic surgery and maybe skin bleaching treatment. By now, after multiple name changes (the latest consensus seems to be she's age 31), she looks like a cross between a Subic Bay bar girl and a cat.

From the Korean point of view, a rich old man having a young mistress is unexceptionable. If the woman by Sterling's side looks vaguely Asian, maybe a Filipino, that's maybe a plus. That she seems to get around on the side is a little embarrassing for him, but Koreans don't have a full-blown harem culture. But if his kept woman is flaunting herself on social media with famous black swordsmen like Magic Johnson and Matt Kemp, well that's beyond the pale. In Koreatown, anything black brings back memories of the black pogrom against Korean shopkeepers and the subsequent Korean v. black firefights during the Rodney King riots. And her taste in men might also lend credence to those rumors that Sterling's mistress is part-black herself, which, from the Korean point-of-view, reflects very badly on the big man.

So, maybe this story is less about the ancient prejudices of the Bad Old Days of Southern Plantations and more about the new prejudices of America's Diverse Future being test-driven in Los Angeles?
            

55 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, now she's not pushing 40 but closer to 30? If that can truly be accurately established, what that means is that its back to Sterling being about 50yrs older than her and they met at the Super Bowl when she was about 27.

Question: Has any research been done to determine that, apart from her role as a full time kept woman, how exactly has this Stiviano or whatever she's called is able to afford plastic surgery and bleaching? That's not exactly a low cost procedure.

Where exactly was she getting the money to pay for all these surgeries (allegedly)?

Oh, maybe perhaps from the previous guys she was kept with?

Otherwise, there's going to be a lot more coming out about this person.

Like classic Hollywood actress Merle Oberon claiming to be born in Tasmania and then after her death it was established she was born in India.

Stranger and stranger.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Steve Sailer said...

She got her first implants in high school in East LA, according to a teacher there.

Hepp said...

The girl is not at all pretty. Her story shows how advantaged women are. Even an ugly one could potentially snag a billionaire if she stays skinny and gets plastic surgery.

My God, I'm halfway through the Daily Mail article and have noticed like six typos. Can't they afford a real editor there?

Anonymous said...

I ama big fan of how the Koreans owned the black rioters in LA. They are Exhibit A whenever some idiot gun banning leftist says, "You don't need rifles and pistols with large capacity...."

The Koreans sure did, and they sure used them when the lapd abandoned them to protect Beverly Hills.

Anonymous said...

Seems far fetched. I don't think the Koreans would care about Sterling's mistresses and it's hard to believe that Sterling would care what they or anyone else thinks anyway.

Anonymous said...

Navigating the multicultural America is a lesson on minorities/future majorities.

Sad country.

Anonymous said...

"In Koreatown, anything black brings back memories of the black pogrom against Korean shopkeepers and the subsequent Korean v. black firefights during the Rodney King riots."

Maybe recent immigrants in the 70s and early 80s.

Koreans today are koregroes who try to be so black and are addicted to NBA and that garbage.

Look at the trashy K-Town show. Look at K-pop. All Negroishness. And Korean girls in America are a bunch of skanks. Only Filo skanks are worse.

Koreans, like all slavish yellow kind, don't like lowlife Negroes. But as yellow folks look up to money, status, and fame, they worship big famous negroes like Magic Johnson.

Koreans are whores. Korea should be called Whorea.

Hepp said...

Steve really seems to want anti-black racism among non-whites to become a big story, but it never does. Most non-whites come to accept political correctneess soon after getting off the boat.

I think Malcolm X said that when European immigrants came to this country the first word that they learned was "n*gger." Today, the first word immigrants learn is "racist." The first generation may maintain some prejudices, but after that they fit pretty comfortably into the Obama coalition.

DR said...

Off topic, but thought Steve or readers might be interested. Rappers sorted by the size of their vocabulary. Some interesting tidbits: hipster white rapper Aesop Rock has the largest vocabulary by far.

"The south has the lowest average (4,268) and the east-coast the highest (4,804). In fact, only 4 of the 17 southern-based artists in the dataset are above average."

"Some of the biggest names in hip hop were in the bottom 20%... While Lil Wayne has never been celebrated for the complexity of his word choices, I expected 2pac, Snoop, and Kanye to be well above average. "

Anonymous said...

Could the Dennis mentioned in the conversation be a Korean? Why didn't oprah or whoever was interviewing V. ask her who Dennis is?

JohnSmith said...

Adam Carolla calls Koreans the black man's "natural predator".

David said...

"So, maybe this story is less about the ancient prejudices of the Bad Old Days of Southern Plantations and more about the new prejudices of America's Diverse Future being test-driven in Los Angeles?"

No. There is nothing outside the programming we received in our school years. To Kill a Mockingbird, after school specials, the ballad of Emmett Till, "Roots," "The Color Purple." Nothing new exists and it's irresponsible to be curious about it.

What's appropriate is to reboot the approved material in slightly new forms ("12 Years A Slave"), like faithful Medieval monks copying a manuscript.

Anonymous said...

Seems far fetched. I don't think the Koreans would care about Sterling's mistresses and it's hard to believe that Sterling would care what they or anyone else thinks anyway.

Agree. Koreans might find it comical, but it wouldn't stop them from doing business with him.

Anonymous said...

She got her first implants in high school in East LA, according to a teacher there.

Let me guess: stripper, escort, porn, hip-hop videos... All of the above.

Getting implants in HS are not a big
in Beverly Hills. Nor is it in Texas during an oil boom. But East LA?

Still this going to be good.

Anonymous said...

From the Daily Mail: Leaving little to the imagination: Stiviano posted this from 'The Abolish Slavery Coalition', comparing herself to Lincoln

God knows whats going on in that photo but it makes you wonder if V thinks that Lincoln had a Model T Ford?

Anonymous said...

>>Steve Sailer said...
""""She got her first implants in high school in East LA, according to a teacher there."""""

But it still doesn't explain where she had the money to purchase them. Unless plastic surgery's no longer a costly investment in LA area.

I"m still trying to understand how someone like her could gain admission into the VIP Super Bowl box for the opportunity to meet Sterling.

Mitt Romney, Obama, Clinton, Bill Gates, Rush, Bono, etc. are the big wigs that sit in the VIP Boxes at the Super Bowl and they aren't hanging out with the riff raff and from the looks of her earlier yrs, she was indeed a raffy kind of a riff.

Anonymous said...

My God, I'm halfway through the Daily Mail article and have noticed like six typos. Can't they afford a real editor there?

oN.

Anonymous said...

"I ama big fan of how the Koreans owned the black rioters in LA."

They didn't. Hundreds of Korean businesses were burned to the ground in then heavily black South Central. The iconic footage of the armed Korean store owners protecting their stores was from in and around Koreatown, where almost all of the troublemakers were hispanic.

Anonymous said...

"the new prejudices of America's Diverse Future being test-driven in Los Angeles?"

I live in L.A. and the things I've heard Asians, Mexicans and Blacks say about each other certainly puts to shame anything I've heard any white person say about the aforementioned groups (pretty much nil, with the exception of one Jewish guy who talks trash about all and regularly uses the n-word).

Anonymous said...

"MailOnline has chosen not to publish the full details of the trauma so as to protect those involved.
But Stiviano told the court that the event had left her feeling ostracized from her community from birth.
'Haven't yet been fully accepted because of my race,' she wrote."

Not really surprising. From what I've seen, the Mexican community is not well-disposed towards Blacks. I can well imagine the insults that she must have heard growing up.

I do find her self-transformation to be rather intriguing, though. Perhaps intentionally, her plastic surgeries, skin bleaching, and hair weave have given her a vaguely East Asian appearance. Her chosen surname (Stiviano), though, has an Italian sound to it. Did she want people to think that she was Eurasian, perhaps an Italian-Filipino mix? Is that her desired self-image?

Anonymous said...

""""""I do find her self-transformation to be rather intriguing, though. Perhaps intentionally, her plastic surgeries, skin bleaching, and hair weave have given her a vaguely East Asian appearance. Her chosen surname (Stiviano), though, has an Italian sound to it. Did she want people to think that she was Eurasian, perhaps an Italian-Filipino mix? Is that her desired self-image?"""""""


In some photos she kind of resembles Nicki Minaj's twin cousin in a vaguely Filipino kind of way. If only Stiviano would completely dye her hair blonde, a la Paris Hilton and maybe change the V to S, as in Stacy Stiviano or maybe add an additional moniker S and go by Sexy Stacy Stiviano.

But good observation that she's attempting to blame her community for the ostracism. Maybe that was the reason she was turning tricks at such a young age; its her Mexican community's fault and she's the victim.

Could the transformation be more of a ghettofabulous 'Get rich or dye trying (the change in hair color).

Or maybe Stiviano's a modern day female version of "little friend" Tony Montana from Scarface.

The World is Yours, Stiviano! All you have to do is reach up and take it!

Canadian Observer said...

Off topic. What do you think of the arrest of Gerry Adams? This topic transitions to some posts you made a week or two about Irish elitist history.

Anonymous said...

Well then maybe he should have gotten a Korean mistress instead of a Mexican-Black one? (Although to be fair, she looks more Filipino than anything else)

TontoBubbaGoldstein said...

But it still doesn't explain where she had the money to purchase them. Unless plastic surgery's no longer a costly investment in LA area.

I"m still trying to understand how someone like her could gain admission into the VIP Super Bowl box for the opportunity to meet Sterling.


Golf ball.
Garden Hose.

TontoBubbaGoldstein said...

But if her mixed-blood son becomes famous--like that football player some yrs back--, Koreans will make a big deal of how he's part Korean.

Hines Ward.

Owns the University of Georgia Bowl records for pass attempts(59), pass completions(31), and pass receptions(12)!

Anonymous said...

>>TontoBubbaGoldstein said:
""""Golf ball.
Garden Hose"""""


Does not compute, spell it out a little. VIP Boxes don't let just any two bitster in. Unless she was part of the hired help serving drinks or making the special food, it just doesn't add up.

Who here during the Super Bowl could enter a VIP box (loaded with private body guards) that's populated with Bono, Mitt Romney, Rush, Clinton, NFL owners and their elite friends?

Obviously when her big moment came, her sterling character did impress him, but first she had to have the opportunity.

Not as if he noticed her seated way up in peanut heaven a few hundred feet over to his left, told his bodyguard while pointing in her direction "go get me some of that."

Sorry, but there's more to the story and hopefully this will be clarified.

How exactly did they meet at the Super Bowl?

Anonymous said...

>>TontoBubbaGoldstein said:

""""Hines Ward""""""


Hines Ward also plays up the fact that he's half Korean nearly every public opportunity he can. Its a safe enough bet that he can speak Korean.

He really doesn't acknowledge his black side or his biological father at all, regarding personal identity, its a rare example of the Korean card trumping the black one.

International Jew said...

"She looks like a cross between a Subic Bay bar girl and a cat."

That's pretty funny, Steve. If you ask me, she looks quite pretty in her yearbook picture. But maybe I'm just a sucker for "natural" girls. And I realize she couldn't have had the career she had, if she'd kept those looks. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

Why didn't he just name his housing blocks something like Kim Khee Kourt?

Or maybe Slope Hills?

Or maybe Chosin Few Towers? (Nah, too Jewish)

Or maybe Inchon Scratchit Apartments?

Anonymous said...

""""Or maybe Inchon Scratchit Apartments?""""

No, no, that sounds like a gangsta rapper and would have the opposite effect.

2Degrees said...

I made the mistake of going to Itaewon the other day. It was nice to get back to my apartment in an entirely Korean neighbourhood. It was depressing to see how many black Americans had white girlfriends in tow. Itaewon is living proof that diversity is a bad idea anywhere. What a sleazy place! How did all those Middle Easterners make it to Korea?

Dennis Dale said...

Interesting. When he says to her "you're supposed to be this little white girl, this little Hispanic girl..." or something like that, clearly he means in the eyes of some group or the public at large. Maybe he's talking about LA's wealthy Jewish community.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

They didn't. Hundreds of Korean businesses were burned to the ground in then heavily black South Central. The iconic footage of the armed Korean store owners protecting their stores was from in and around Koreatown, where almost all of the troublemakers were hispanic.

Korean/black urban tension has been somewhat exaggerated because black media figures like Spike Lee and Ice Cube mined it for a compelling cri de coeur. The truth is Koreans have been remarkably successful at getting on everyone's nerves. Even the Armenians can't stand them

Anonymous said...

"The girl is not at all pretty. Her story shows how advantaged women are. Even an ugly one could potentially snag a billionaire if she stays skinny and gets plastic surgery."

This seems to be the consensus of the Daily Mail readers. The highest rated comments are the ones that say she's ugly, which is odd since she is obviously quite pretty. Even in the pre-surgery high school yearbook photo she looks good. The problem is in her character not her apperance. So why do her looks become the main target?

Anonymous said...

From the Daily Mail: Leaving little to the imagination: Stiviano posted this from 'The Abolish Slavery Coalition', comparing herself to Lincoln

What Lincoln does she mean?
The one in Nebraska, Illinois, California, Massachusetts, or the original in England?

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Why didn't he just name his housing blocks something like Kim Khee Kourt?

Seems to me they prefer nonsensical names; near where I grew up the strip mall stores have signs like "Chicken Day" and "5.2 BBQ" and "Hello Pizza." Sticking with the Hangul signs would have been less odd

CJ said...

The Koreans sure did, and they sure used them when the lapd abandoned them to protect Beverly Hills.

The LAPD abandoned their duties, yes, but Beverly Hills has its own police force. They assembled in force at the town's entrances during the 1992 riots.

Anonymous said...

Rancho Beverly Hills
In 1838, the Mexican governor of California deeded the land grant El Rodeo de las Aguas to Maria Rita Valdez Villa, the Afro Latina widow of a Spanish soldier. Maria Rita, an early California feminist icon, built an adobe ranch house near the intersection of present day Sunset Boulevard and Alpine Drive. She employed a vast posse of cowboys and proceeded to raise cattle and horses.

How come you never hear of her or Marie-Thereze Coincoin during 28 Days of Fictional Black Achievement Period (29 in a Leap year)?

Cattle gave way to herd of sheep
iStevenation fumes!

Anonymous said...


"Koreans are whores. Korea should be called Whorea."

I don't know what it's like in California, but here in Hawaii the koreans own all the whorehouses....otherwise known as massage parlors and "korean hostess bars".

Anonymous said...

Steve really seems to want anti-black racism among non-whites to become a big story, but it never does. Most non-whites come to accept political correctness soon after getting off the boat.

They understand that they arent allowed to talk in public about their real prejudices. And more importantly the media political complex is going to cover for them anyway. The latter is the real story. Some Asian guy could shout all day about killing all blacks, we'd likely never even hear about it.

Even better the likes of Zimmerman and Sterling magically become white when deemed to have crossed the line. See, so the coalition of color still holds!

Anonymous said...


"He really doesn't acknowledge his black side......its a rare example of the Korean card trumping the black one."

So why do you think he married an african-american woman instesd of a korean one?

Btw,the mother of his son is now his ex-wife. Looking at google images his current girlfriend is a caucasian brunette.

Cail Corishev said...

"I'm still trying to understand how someone like her could gain admission into the VIP Super Bowl box for the opportunity to meet Sterling."

Golf ball.
Garden Hose.


Somewhere a party planner or bouncer still remembers the top of her head fondly.

Hepp said...

"This seems to be the consensus of the Daily Mail readers. The highest rated comments are the ones that say she's ugly, which is odd since she is obviously quite pretty. Even in the pre-surgery high school yearbook photo she looks good. The problem is in her character not her apperance. So why do her looks become the main target?"

I am aware that there's a phenomenon of virginal men on the internet claiming every woman they see is too ugly for them.

However, in this case, the girl is objectively ugly. Even normed for age and race. Her body is pretty nice, but her face seriously disturbs me. And I'm 100% sure most heterosexual men would agree.

Anonymous said...

"Korean/black urban tension has been somewhat exaggerated because black media figures like Spike Lee and Ice Cube mined it for a compelling cri de coeur. The truth is Koreans have been remarkably successful at getting on everyone's nerves. Even the Armenians can't stand them"

Indeed, I've long noticed that among all the East Asian peoples, the Koreans by far tend to provoke the most visceral reaction among westerners. I think it's a combination of two things: their notorious surliness towards outsiders, and the overall in-your-faceness of their culture.

Karl said...

To my friends and acquaintances I maintain a stoic attitude of indifference towards the DTS case, "Is this really that interesting here?"

The truth is I find the situation fascinating, but not for any reasons I can discuss with my friends and acquaintances.

Anonymous said...

Heartbroken over an Asian lady?

Anonymous said...

I'd like to know the real Korean attitude towards blacks. In Korea, I mean.

The extent of my knowledge about Korean culture is from the TV show MASH. I remember one show was about interracial babies. Usually the fathers were white. According to the priest character on the show, some of the babies were killed at birth. Some of the boy babies were castrated. I wonder if any of the latter lived to adulthood and what happened to them. Or if that's true.

Anonymous said...

I think she was attractive in her high school yearbook photo. Not so much anymore, post-surgeries.

Pat Boyle said...

Korea is roughly in the same position as Japan was in the fifties. Back then Japanese were ridiculed and their products were disparaged.

According to Lynn and Vanhanen South Korea is the smartest nation on earth. I think in the long run that fact will bury all the prejudice.

Not one person in a thousand knows that Hyundai is the dominant ship building company in the world. They make a diesel engine that's three stories high. Korea built a massive industrial infrastructure in a country with essentially no natural resources. There's been nothing like that since the Meijii Restoration. Koreans are damn impressive.

In downtown Oakland all the doctors at Kaiser seem to now be Korean. All the patients seem to be black. Google maps claims there is a Koreatown here. But there are no Korean restaurants or shops there. It's just a residential area. I had no idea that Neighborhood was Korean and I pass through there regularly.

Lou Cannon in this definitive history of the Rodney King riots says that after the Watts Riots of 1965 the Jews got out. They sold all their stores to the Koreans. Maybe the Koreans in Oakland have learned a lesson and also don't care to own commercial property in a riot prone neighborhood.

I'd ask a Korean but the only ones I know are doctors.

Pat Boyle

Anonymous said...

Koreans are easily the most abrasive East Asians I've ever dealt with.

Anonymous said...

"I live in L.A. and the things I've heard Asians, Mexicans and Blacks say about each other certainly puts to shame anything I've heard any white person say about the aforementioned groups (pretty much nil, with the exception of one Jewish guy who talks trash about all and regularly uses the n-word)."

For this forum especially, it's downright absurd to capitalize "Black" and not capitalize "white", even as we type these words on the White man's inventions. I laugh at people who think they are not brainwashed.

Anonymous said...

"In downtown Oakland all the doctors at Kaiser seem to now be Korean. All the patients seem to be black. Google maps claims there is a Koreatown here. But there are no Korean restaurants or shops there. It's just a residential area. I had no idea that Neighborhood was Korean and I pass through there regularly."

Koreatown in Oakland is along Telegraph Avenue north of West Grand.

Anonymous said...

According to Lynn and Vanhanen South Korea is the smartest nation on earth. I think in the long run that fact will bury all the prejudice."

I know some v. nice ones indeed. But this is a country where live cats are thrown into boiling water to make medicine. I will never forget the cat tethered in front of the pot it was to be thrown into. The eyes. The eyes.
And I met a Sikh Indian guy who'd been to Korea and said he hated them. His feelings were visceral. He said they had a belief that if dogs were beaten, tortured and terrorized before cruelly killing them, their meat would taste better and make men more potent.
No. This is not a myth. I wish it were.
It's dying out hopefully, but it took the loathing of the outside world to do it. Europe has mostly had to learn its own lessons. The English had a reputation for being kind to animals dating way back. A French lady told me that she did not really see love for animals much until she went to England in the 1960s.

bobn said...

But if his kept woman is flaunting herself on social media with famous black swordsmen like Magic Johnson and Matt Kemp, well that's beyond the pale.

Giving new meaning to an old expression! You Rock!

Anonymous said...

I am Asian-American (generation 1.5), and I agree that Korean-Americans as a group are irritating. They are very status conscious and will rip into anyone they think they can bully.

Then there is the weird homogeneity in their looks. Yeah, I know that <> all look alike, but I have really notice it for Koreans.